


reminds me of the summertime

by imagines



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Astral Plane, Begging, Friendsheith, M/M, Power Play, Sparring, Unhappy Ending, but easy to read as clone theory if you like, implied future breakup, open-ended re: shiro theories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines
Summary: Five times Shiro touches Lance, and the one time he can’t.





	reminds me of the summertime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AshesTheTerrible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshesTheTerrible/gifts).



> a gift for [ashessmashes](http://ashessmashes.tumblr.com/) for the Shangst Exchange! i listened to [Placebo - Bitter End](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOBeubfr-xY) a whole bunch while editing...therefore, this title. shiro ain’t okay, y’all.
> 
> i’ve been longing to write some astral plane angst since s5 dropped, so thank you to Ashes for giving me the perfect excuse!

**\- 1 -**

It’s that time of year again: the sun shines in an endlessly blue sky, hummingbirds flit about the campus gardens, wisteria cascades down the sides of the pergola leading to the main hall, and all the second-year pilots are meeting their fates in the form of thin little envelopes containing their flight test results. Shiro’s well-trained at keeping his eyes front—he doesn’t want the students he passes in the corridors to feel self-conscious, caught up as they are in their overwhelming elation, or stunned silence, or wrenching grief.

One brawny teenager is patting helplessly at a lanky boy’s back. “Okay, but you’re top of the cargo class, that’s pretty good.”

“Not good _enough!_ ” moans the boy. “Now Keith is gonna get the idea that he’s _better_ than me—”

“—He _is_ better than you,” his friend tells him, and quickly adds, “Just at flying, though!” It doesn’t soothe the fire in the boy’s narrowed eyes. “Uh—also at being an asshole? And…getting detention?”

“Yeah, _exactly_ , that’s what I’m _saying_ , he needs me around to keep him on his toes!”

Shiro nearly makes it past the scene. Oh, he wants to stay out of it, he really does; there’s no way the presence of Garrison Pilot Extraordinaire and Best Friend of the Hated Keith can possibly make anything better here. But the boy’s friend catches Shiro’s eye, and the pleading in his gaze is so desperate that Shiro can almost hear him screaming _Help me!!_ So, against his better judgement, Shiro comes to a halt just before he reaches the two. “Rough time on the exam?” he asks.

The lanky boy spins to face him. “What do _you_ fucking thiiii—nk…ohmyGOD, you’re, you’re—”

It’s the first time Shiro’s seen the blood _actually_ drain from someone’s face, and for a moment he thinks the boy might pass out. He looks to the boy’s friend, who for some reason seems to be trying to stifle laughter. The friend mouths something dramatically—Shiro thinks it might be _He loves you!!_ but he’s just gonna let that slide. “Ah—yeah, hi, I'm Shiro, and you are?” He sticks his hand out.

The boy's mouth has fallen wide open; he looks at Shiro's hand, then back at Shiro's face, and does not speak. He looks like a startled fish.

His friend jumps into the awkward space, shaking Shiro's hand in the boy's place. "I'm Hunk! I am in the flight engineering program, and this here is my bro-in-arms Lance, who is really a very good pilot and is just kind of down in the dumps today because he placed two points too low to make fighter class next year."

"Can we _not_ ," growls Lance, "air my _personal failures_ in front of _Takashi Shirogane of all people?_ Hunk? Can you do that for me, buddy?"

“He’s also known as the Tailor!” Hunk chirps. “Because—”

“No, nope, we’re not gonna talk about that. Not when I am still recovering from this _devastation_.”

Tentatively, Shiro reaches out. Lance doesn’t move away, so he puts his hand on Lance’s shoulder and gives him an encouraging smile. Lance turns even paler; his friend should probably take him to the canteen for a snack. “Keep practicing, all right?” Shiro urges. “You never know what could happen. If an opportunity comes your way, you’ll want to be prepared. The only true failure is giving up.”

“He really just said that,” Lance murmurs to Hunk, still as stone under Shiro’s hand. “He is famous for three things, one of which is his quoteability, which until today I would have called a legend, but I am now forced to conclude it is fact.”

“What are the other two things?” Shiro asks, attempting to throw in some fun repartee.

Hunk is no longer bothering to stifle his laughter. Lance, who is rapidly turning as red as bougainvillea, makes a sort of soft gurgling noise and elbows Hunk in the side.

“Your hair,” Hunk gasps. “It’s _really good_ hair. And also your—”

Lance ducks away from Shiro, leaping in front of Hunk. “ _CHARMING DEMEANOR!_ ” he yells, warding off whatever Hunk was going to say.

“If you say so,” Shiro hears Hunk mutter.

Okay then. Seems like a good enough time to make an elegant escape. “Well, it was great meeting the two of you! See you in the skies!” Shiro throws them his brightest grin—Lance sputters some more—and hurries himself away down the hall.

**\- 2 -**

The next time Shiro meets him, it’s in the creaky old shack out in the desert that had belonged to Keith’s father, and now belongs to Keith. “Lance, right?”

Once again, Lance looks warily at the hand Shiro offers. Understandable. Shiro doesn’t even wanna touch it some days, but it’s attached to him, so he doesn’t really get a say in the matter. But after only a moment of hesitation, Lance slides his hand into Shiro’s, his grip firm. He smiles at Shiro, as if getting up close and personal with alien tech is just part of his daily routine.

Later that morning, Shiro’s alone on the porch with Keith. “Tell me about the last year. Don’t leave anything out,” he insists. “Even if you think I won’t like it.”

“Oh, there’s plenty you aren’t gonna like.”

Keith tries to break everything to him gently, speaking in circles around his expulsion and hiding the ugly facts like he’s sweeping dirt under a rug. Even though it takes awhile, Shiro drags all of it into the light anyway. “I should never have left you,” he says at the end of it. “Keith, I’m so sorry.”

Keith won’t look at him, gazing out instead into the endless desert, where heat shimmers in the distance and blurs the details. Still, he doesn’t move away from Shiro’s arm around his shoulder. “I’m a grown-up,” he tells Shiro. “I can make my own decisions.” There’s no anger in his voice, just resignation, as if his period of self-destruction had never seemed like much of a surprise to him. “You know, you can’t make yourself responsible for me like that. I don’t want you holding yourself back from your dreams because you think you have to take care of me.”

“I know you can take care of yourself. I just wish…” The number of things he wishes could fill the Barringer Crater.

Keith leans hard against him, almost shoving, but Shiro knows it’s Keith’s way of hugging when he doesn’t know how to touch. “Let’s talk about something else. Like how Lance keeps staring at you.”

“Oh god. I think he thinks I’m going to bite him.”

“Ha,” Keith says, and a grin creeps onto his lips. Shiro likes it; he hopes the smile will stick around for awhile. “I think he wishes you _would_.”

Well, that’s ridiculous. “No, no,” Shiro corrects him. “He’s just freaked out by a presumed-dead-guy crashing to Earth from literal outer space. Plus, I’m pretty shredded and not in an attractive way.” He motions at the scar splitting his face in half. That wound had hurt so bad, he’d thought he was gonna die. That was before they took his arm—before he learned it would take a great deal more than pain to kill him.

_Focus._ He blinks once, hard, and breathes out quietly. He’s at Keith’s home, not lying on a cold steel table. No one’s trying to kill him, and Keith is talking again.

“Are you kidding? You could pick me up in one hand. While picking Lance up in the other. You are easily the hottest person in this shack.”

“You are biased,” Shiro informs him.

Keith cuts his eyes over. “It would probably make his entire sad little life if you talked to him for five seconds. I’m just saying, you should go for it.”

“There’s nothing to go _for._ ”

“When he shook your hand earlier? I practically had to dodge the sparks.”

“Okay, Keith.”

“I just wanna see you smile like you did before—” Wide-eyed, Keith puts a hand over his mouth. “Before,” he mumbles, unwilling or unable to fill in the blank.

It’s an entirely different and unexpected kind of agony, catching these glimpses of Keith’s sorrow and loneliness during Shiro’s absence. Shiro squeezes him tighter, wishing he would never have to let Keith go. “It’s so good to see you again.” He speaks the words into Keith’s shoulder, as if that way, they’ll sink into Keith’s heart and never be forgotten.

**\- 3 -**

“So what happened? Last thing I remember is seeing Not-Rover, and then…nothing.”

Shiro’s sitting on the edge of Lance’s bed, giving him a quick check-up before leaving him to his rest. Lance’s color is back; no more of that horrifying gray tinge to his face. When he saw Lance on the floor all bruised and so still, he’d thought Lance might be—but it doesn’t bear thinking of, not when everything’s all right now. “The explosion, the fight with Sendak… you know about all that.”

“Yeah, but…you saved me, right?”

“I carried you out of the crystal chamber after the explosion, yes.”

“Carried me, huh? Man, I would have liked to be awake for that.”

“It’s nothing. Really. I mean, I would have done it for any of you.” Is he imagining the faint flush on Lance’s cheeks?

“Mind if I get a goodnight hug? You know, since I missed out on being held in your arms earlier.”

Shiro holds his arms open, and Lance eases himself forward; Shiro catches him wincing. Might have to get him back in the pod for another cycle—if he’ll go, which he probably won’t. Shiro holds him like he’s made of papier-mache, hoping not to cause further pain.

Lance, for his part, latches his arms around Shiro’s shoulders and nearly hugs the breath out of him. Then he turns his head; his breath brushes Shiro’s neck. “How about a goodnight kiss?”

It strikes a match in the pit of Shiro’s stomach. He tries to take deep, calming breaths. Lance can probably feel his chest rising and falling; this knowledge does nothing for the calming part of things. “You’re still out of it from the pod, Lance.”

“No shit. I wouldn’t have the nerve to say it otherwise. But I wanted to say it before all this crystal bomb crap, so…”

So Keith was right. “Lance.”

“What?”

Shiro takes a moment to gather his words. Keith was right, but the timing is wrong. Shiro’s not the fun, outgoing, not-fucked-up guy Lance knew from the Garrison anymore. “Listen, I know how you feel about me, but I don’t want to be unfair to you—”

Lance leans back from him, a tiny frown tucked between his brows. “Hey, man, you can relax, okay? I’m not gonna get all heartbroken and weird around you if you say no.”

There is a long pause, during which Shiro tries and fails not to look at Lance’s mouth.

Match to fuse, glittering and sparking down down _down_. He curbs the explosion so there are no visible signs, but the heat of it rolls through him nonetheless.

“Fine,” Shiro says, because he’s losing track of reasons why he shouldn’t. What he plans is a little peck on Lance’s cheek, but Lance turns his head, and Shiro doesn’t course-correct. So, one strong hand wrapped around the back of Shiro’s neck and his mouth pressed hard to Shiro’s, Lance kisses like this is the only chance he’ll ever get, which—he probably thinks it is.

“Been meaning to thank you,” Lance says, when finally he turns Shiro loose. “You know I’m here because of you?”

“I feel like I should apologize for that.”

“Like hell you should. The day you saw me after the exam—I don’t know if you remember—”

“I remember.”

“Well, I did what you said. I didn’t give up, I kept practicing, and when I found Blue, I was ready for her. I flew a _space lion_ because you cared enough to stop and talk to me that day. You care so much about all of us. Care about yourself too once in awhile, would you?”

He cares about himself, Shiro wants to say. He works out, keeps himself strong. He plans battle strategies, keeps himself sharp. He focuses on the war, keeps himself centered— _distracted_ , his mind suggests, but he brushes that thought away. He does what needs to be done. Later, later, there will be time for the blackened, rotting memories he keeps crammed into a cage beneath anything that matters more, which is everything else. He doesn’t say any of this to Lance. “Think you can sleep now?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Shiro.” Lance wriggles under his blankets, pulling them up to his chin, eyes drifting half-closed. Shiro stands up, but he can’t resist brushing a curl off Lance’s forehead before he leaves.

**\- 4 -**

Shiro’s in the middle of fighting a high-level droid when the door to the training deck opens. It’s Lance, but he doesn’t even look at Shiro, just heads for the mats in the corner and starts stretching. Well, he’s had a hard day, what with getting handcuffed to a tree by a cute girl and all.

Shiro turns his attention back to the droid, eventually sending it crashing to the floor with one more swipe of his hand. “End training sequence.”

Lance still doesn’t look up, his focus set on holding a split so wide Shiro thinks it would break him if he tried it.

Shiro does some push-ups and squats. Spends time on the pull-up bar. Opens the stopwatch on his holopad and gets into a plank. When the orange numbers hit two minutes, he lowers himself to the floor and lies there breathing deeply while his burning muscles relax.

This time, when Shiro raises his head, Lance is staring openly. Mouth half-open and everything. He looks like he’s starving and has just walked into an all-you-can-eat diner, and…well, that would make Shiro the buffet. He gets to his feet slowly, heart pounding and legs weak—which is easy enough to blame on the workout he’s just put his body through. “Wanna go a few rounds?”

Lance snaps his mouth closed as if he’s just remembered where he is and who he’s with. “With you?”

“See anyone else around?” Shiro lets the corner of his mouth twist up.

Instantly, the hungry look is back on Lance’s face. “Yeah, let’s do it,” he says. “Hope you’re prepared for utter defeat.”

They drag the mats into the center of the room so no one gets tossed into a wall. Shiro says, “Ready?” and Lance nods. Five seconds later, Shiro has Lance in a headlock on the floor, holding him there until Lance squawks in frustration and slaps the floor. “Utter defeat, huh?” Shiro asks.

“I let you have that one!” Lance rolls his shoulders a couple times. “Go again.”

“You got it,” Shiro says, and gets Lance facedown with his arms pulled behind his back. “Did you let me have this one too?”

“Just wait til I get up, you’re gonna get it!” Lance’s words are muffled against the floor.

“Am I?”

“Yeah! You should be so afraid right now—” Lance tries to thrash, but Shiro just settles his weight more firmly and holds him still. “—you _punk-ass motherfucker!_ ”

“What will you do to me when I let you up?”

“Kick your ass, that’s what!”

“Okay.” Shiro rolls off Lance, who pops up to his feet, flushed and breathing hard.

“Oh, you think it’s that easy, you think you can just— _aghk_ —”

Shiro takes him to the ground again, putting him on his back in a crucifix.

“—okay,” Lance says, voice gone quiet. “I guess you can.”

Shiro curls forward so he can whisper right in Lance’s ear. “Yeah, I definitely can. So knock off the smack talk.”

“Or what, you’re gonna shut me up again?”

That morning, he’d turned without a second thought, clapping his hand over Lance’s mouth, carefully ignoring the way Lance’s eyes went wide. _No, not doing that_ , he’d said, and when he’d taken his hand away, Lance had said _yes, sir_ under his breath as if he didn’t want anyone else hearing it. As if it was just for Shiro. So now, he releases Lance’s arms, but gets on top of him again to pin his shoulders. “Maybe,” Shiro says. “If I thought that’s what you needed to be good.”

“Help me be good,” Lance whispers, and Shiro’s grip on his shoulders tightens.

Shiro takes a long look: the sheen of sweat on Lance’s skin, the motion of his throat as he swallows hard, and most importantly, the challenge in his eyes. “That’s what you want?”

“Yes, I want it, Shiro, _please_.”

He lets go of one shoulder to press his palm over Lance’s mouth—not too hard, but enough that he can’t speak. “Don’t make a sound.” Then he seals his mouth to the fluttering pulse in Lance’s throat, sucking hard until Lance is panting through his nose. But he stays quiet. “So good,” Shiro murmurs against the red mark he’s left on Lance’s skin. “Doing just what I told you. For once.”

Lance snorts, and Shiro feels him grinning under his palm.

It sets Shiro off too, and then he’s laughing into Lance’s neck. He moves his free hand from Lance’s other shoulder to his hair, petting gently at the soft curls. “Keep your hands on the floor.” Lance closes his eyes and nods, and Shiro slides his hand down to the collar of Lance’s t-shirt, pulling it down to leave biting kisses in a line along his collarbone. Lance is squirming now, breathing uneven; Shiro can see his hands curling into fists at his sides. He shifts his weight back in order to pin Lance’s hips more firmly, and ends up pressed against the line of Lance’s cock, hard in his shorts. Lance’s mouth opens wide on a gasp under Shiro’s hand, and Shiro gives him a moment to calm himself.

But only a moment. With his free hand, he strokes Lance’s chest, exploring lean, defined muscles. He trails his fingertips over Lance’s nipples until they peak under the thin fabric of his shirt; rubs slow circles into Lance’s belly until his whole body is trembling.

Then Lance makes noise, a sharp moan, and Shiro immediately uncovers his mouth. “You okay?”

Lance chews on his lower lip for a second before answering. “Yeah, but if you don’t stop…I’m gonna come.”

“Do you want to come?”

“Oh fuck,” Lance whimpers. “What do you think?”

“I think you can be brave, and tell me.”

Lance’s hands fly up to cover his face, but Shiro doesn’t make him put them back on the floor. Right now, Lance gets anything and everything he needs.

“I want to,” Lance says in a rush. “I want you to make me, please, I’m so close—”

“Okay, okay, Lance, I’ve got you, you’re okay.” Shiro leans forward, planting his hands on the mats on either side of Lance, giving himself the leverage to roll his hips hard against Lance, until Lance arches under him and curses and falls limp, dragging heavy breaths into his heaving chest.

Lance takes his hands off his face and stares up at Shiro. Shiro’s not altogether sure what kind of reaction is gonna happen, but then Lance gives him the biggest shit-eating grin he’s ever seen and says, “I told you, you’d get it if you let me up.”

“Don’t think you really kicked my ass, though,” Shiro muses. They’re both covered in sweat; his T-shirt is clinging to his back and he can smell come and still he has no desire to get up off the floor.

“I could find other things to do to your ass, believe me,” Lance tells him, and then turns bright red, which is incredibly endearing.

Shiro nuzzles at his throat. “I’ll have to take you up on that.”

“Only if you let me record a siren noise, though.”

“ _No_ , Lance.”

**\- X -**

It’s like being underwater—a cold and silent realm, the air flowing by in streams like black and purple ink. He feels like static: Blurred. Muted. Indecipherable. His memories won’t hold still; they swirl like the dark colors around him, time blending and fusing in stubborn disarray. He’s traveled further and further into the past, trying to hang on, but each piece eventually breaks up and dissipates. Now even the early days have melted away. Moments later, he’s left wondering if there were ever any early days at all, if he’s ever been anyone else—

_you saved me, right? he’s better than me, i was ready for her._

He shakes his head, trying to throw off the storm of wrongness, hoping his thoughts will shake up and settle into the patterns he’s accustomed to.

The patterns he _thinks_ he’s accustomed to.

_you think you can just—i know you can take care of yourself. rough time, have to take you up on that._

He hears a name shouted by many voices: _Shiro, Shiro_ , _SHIRO!_ Do they mean him? He turns, and there are people here with him now, each surrounded in brilliant color in contrast to his sickening purple half-light. They are bright and loud, and he calls out to them, but his voice will only go to half-volume. Like he’s only a half-life. His stomach burns.

_don’t want to be unfair. all heartbroken, be brave and tell me, your hands on the floor, he wishes you would. the only true failure is if you don’t stop. i should apologize, can you do that for me?_

One of them is closer now, and louder, his features becoming clear even in the gloom of the nowhere place. _Shiro_ , he calls again, and the name of him finally comes to mind.

_Lance. Lance! Listen to me! I’m—I can’t—_

_What?! Shiro, I can’t hear you—_

Too late. Their lights are already fading like burnt-down candles, and he no longer knows himself but he does know this: they will never come back.

His hands don’t seem to belong to him. One of them glows, but not like a nightlight. Like a nightmare—a nobody hand. He sits down on the nothing floor, and waits for no one to save him.

_i am still recovering and not in an attractive way._

_i would have liked what you needed to be good._

_help me, i’m so sorry._

**\- 5 -**

“You should sit down,” Lance tells him. “We’ll get through this.”

Shiro’s too tired to argue. He’s too tired, just in general, after weeks of headaches, of friends seeming like enemies, of irresistible urges to turn his head and look beside or behind himself, as if at any moment he’s going to catch something sneaking up on him. He sleeps less than ever before, and his nightmares have morphed from cold steel tables and howling arena crowds, to staring into the eyes of someone who has his face but not his mind.

The worst part of those dreams is, they always feel like he’s discovered the real owner of his face, which makes _him_ the fake. _It’s like I’m not myself_ , he’d said to Lance, under his breath as if confessing a crime. But try as he might to pinpoint the faultline, his memories are seamless. He is himself, he _must_ be. It’s just the oxygen deprivation. How he aches to accept that comforting thought.

Lance may be one to panic at potential future danger, yet with Shiro right in front of him admitting to his fractured state of mind, he’s perfectly calm. Good quality in a sniper—the worse the firefight, the surer his aim. Shiro, being a slowly-unfolding catastrophe himself, is grateful for this about Lance.

They breathe slowly, carefully, and wait to come up for air.

Later, with the Castleship back up and running, Shiro goes to Lance’s room. He thinks he just wants to talk, but when Lance opens the door and motions him inside, Shiro crowds up against him, all his carefully-cultivated self-control bleeding away.

Lance takes him in his arms. Lance leads him to the bed. Lance lays him down and rides him, slowly, sweetly, and Shiro thinks that maybe he can just do this, he can be with Lance and not ask himself too many questions, and it will be fine.

Except when he’s lying there after, curled up in the blankets with Lance tucked close beside him, the headache comes back. That’s an understatement: it’s a freight train crashing into his brain, setting his nerves ablaze, and he has the thought that tearing his eyes out might be less painful than this. Lance tries to get him to drink some water, and he coughs it back up in seconds, sputtering an apology for ruining Lance’s sheets. Lance murmurs reassurance, and changes the bedclothes, and turns off all the lights, and presses an ice pack to the back of Shiro’s neck. Shiro lets him do all this, because it won’t make anything worse, because he can’t bring himself to tell Lance there’s nothing that will stop the pain but time.

“I’m not safe for you,” he gasps at one point. “I’m not myself, I’m not who you think, I’m not—” Not _him_ , he wants to say, but it’s as though his mouth has been sewn shut, and the pain spikes, and his words dissolve into a scream.

When it ends, Lance gets Shiro dressed and walks him to his own room, and never asks him what he meant by what he said. By now, Shiro’s pretty certain that something within him wouldn’t allow him to explain anyway. He lies in his bed, alone in the dark, and finally allows himself to realize that he can’t go to Lance again. It _isn’t_ safe—Shiro’s infected now, filled with unknown poison, and no one should let their guard down near him. He’ll have to find the right words to stop what’s happening between them. The words to cause just enough pain to break them apart, but not so much that Lance feels he has to leave Voltron. That wouldn’t be safe for him either.

Screwing his eyes shut, he tries and tries to think of wisteria and bougainvillea and hummingbirds, but the images slide away like melting ice slipping through his fingertips.

 


End file.
